It's time for Alaska politics now!!

OK, folks! Now that I'm moving on from Arizona, it's time for me to start obsessing over Alaska politics!

The first item on the agenda is the upcoming showdown between Senator Lisa Murkowski and Sitka Mayor Scott McAdams. Sen. Murkowski was so qualified for the position in the first place, it only took her father leaving the job to become Governor and appointing her as his replacement for her to take office. That's right, this isn't even nepotism, it's, what, filiatism?

Mayor McAdams, on the other hand, is relatively new to me. As I am moving to Sitka, it disappoints me to think that a good leader would be ascending to Washington so soon after my arrival, but he is widely known for being a hard worker and exceptionally honorable. Though he worked in the private sector in Sitka for many years, he never lobbied the state government or pushed for local laws that would benefit his colleagues (a rarity in Alaska, it appears), and he went out of his way to help others even when he wouldn't benefit directly in any way (almost like that's what he was elected to do!). Yes, folks, this is an honorable man working in politics. I hesitate to call him a politician, because that name has lost its luster enough that I don't know if it even applies.

SO WHERE IS THIS ALL GOING

Yesterday, I followed the recommendation of Shannyn Moore and followed Mayor McAdams on Twitter. Shortly after doing so, I posted a tweet recommending that my followers check him out and support him, indicating my impending move to Sitka. Today, he obviously was catching up on his deluge of followers and I was followed not only by him but by his staff.

OK OK SO YOU'RE STAR STRUCK

No, I'm not impressed by that. Following someone means nothing. Politicians do it routinely without ever going any farther than that. What impresses me is that McAdams is interacting with people as people. He read what I posted and wrote back, asking where I was going to be living. Figuring there's no-one better to chat up in a small city than the mayor and no-one better to chat up in a campaign than the candidate, I responded with the general location in town and my intention to volunteer for him. He responded in a matter of minutes by noting that he looks forward to meeting me in person.

I'm not posting all of this to brag, but to point out how atypical this man is. He is not only running his own Twitter account (his staff have their own because, in his words, he "has a day job") and posting his own tweets, but he is also engaging and relating to his potential voters and volunteers. I know that Alaska is a small state and this is easier than in many larger states, but he is conversing with supporters around the country and actually reaching out in a real way.

Alaskans, unless there is something huge that I haven't yet uncovered about Scott McAdams, he is the man to represent Alaska in Washington for the next six years.

The Time Has Come...

I'm feeling a bit Marvin K. Mooney right now. Not so much that I'm being kicked out of anywhere, but that I'm looking for any conveyance to hit the road. It's not even that I'm upset with anything where I am, but

WE'RE MOVING TO SITKA!

Goodbye, Jan Brewer!

Goodbye, Joe Arpaio!

Goodbye, Russell Pearce!

Goodbye, really good Mexican food. :(

Goodbye, SB1070!

Goodbye, Arizona!


It's a good feeling.

apathy or...?

For the first time since I've been legal to do so, I'm skipping an election.

Arizona is holding a special election with one issue on the ballot: a proposition to raise the state sales tax by 1%. This tax will theoretically be used to raise $1 billion to preserve education, health care, and public safety money that will otherwise be axed. I'm normally a huge fan of education, health care, and public safety, but I still don't know how to vote on this issue, so I'll abstain.

I'm tempted to vote against this proposition for several reasons. Sales taxes are highly regressive, and I dislike that intensely. Further, I hate that the state legislature insisted on cutting taxes in every other area for the past twenty years and is now acting like this emergency situation sprung up on us out of nowhere. Further, I don't trust our state's leadership to actually use this revenue as promised (see: state parks fund).

I'm tempted to vote for this proposition for one big reason: the money is desperately needed.

Since I absolutely cannot resolve these two different viewpoints, I have decided to abstain from voting. It's an odd feeling, but I think it's what comes of not trusting my elected officials while knowing that something must be done.

The Kindness of Strangers

The other day, my wife and I and our two kids were out on the town, taking care of a few errands. When you live as remotely as we do, there is no trip to town that is less than two hours round trip, so errands always include a meal.

We decided to stop in at a Japanese restaurant that we have enjoyed in the past and sat down to a very nice meal. My wife ordered hand rolls, but I got to eat the spicy salmon one because it was a bit too spicy for her. I ordered a sashimi bowl which consisted of at least eight different types of seafood, all raw with the exception of the cephalopod and the shrimp, sliced into very generous pieces and laid on top of a bed of rice. Our daughter had food of her own, but we shared our food with her and our son.

At the end of our meal, my wife headed up to the register to settle our bill. When she got to the cashier, the lady apologized and said that we shouldn't have even gotten a bill. A man sitting behind us had enjoyed watching our family so much that he decided to pay for our food without letting us know. My wife headed over to thank him (I didn't yet know of the situation, as I was wrangling children), and barely got a first name out of him because he really didn't want it to be a big deal. After leaving a generous tip and walking outside, we decided that we wanted to pass on the generosity, so I went back in and asked the cashier to let me pay for another table's meal. The whole situation sounded exactly like something that ItStartsWith.Us would encourage.

At this point we left, but were so amazed by the kindness and generosity of that man that we intend to follow his example when we are able in the future. I'm sure there is no way for us to check, but I hope that the couple was informed of the story behind their bill being paid and that they continued to pass along the good deed.

been a while...

It appears that I haven't written in this blog since September. There have been several times that I've considered pulling it out of mothballs, but it took my wife's prompting to examine why I haven't done much writing.

First, it is worth pointing out that I don't lack for opinions that I want to share. Any person who has been near me in the past few weeks knows exactly how I feel about what's been going on in Arizona and I haven't been holding back on my other opinions either. I still hate most of the music the kids these days listen to and I still think that 90% of the movies coming out are terrible and I still hate it when people are in positions of power without having the knowledge or training for those positions and I still wish I'd gone to school to be an audiologist so that I could get rich on the ears of millions of today's iPodded teens.

I think my problem is twofold.

The first part of it is a really good thing. I've discovered a number of excellent blogs that say much of what I'd like to say. The Mudflats, Blog For Arizona, and a pile of others that I follow publicly are extremely well-written and update frequently on national and Arizona politics. How can I possibly step in and fight the Goldwater Institute better than David Safier or Sarah Palin better than Jeanne Devon, or even the Prescott Daily Courier better than Steven Ayres?

My second problem is far worse. Quite simply, I'm demoralized. I was having a great time paying attention to the good work being done by people like Kyrsten Sinema and Dan Patterson on behalf of Arizona's taxpayers, but paying attention to what they were up to meant that I was guaranteed to also see what Jack Harper, Russell Pearce, and Judy Burges were up to. Of the three, Pearce is the only one with international notoriety right now (thank you, Rachel Maddow), but the rest of the AZ Senate and House have been up to some downright stupid (...or evil) work as well. Stealing the money that the state parks have earned and shutting down the parks, holding $1 Billion in funding for education, health care, and public safety hostage to force a sales tax increase, cutting several million dollars worth of children's health insurance thereby losing $7 Billion in Federal matching money in order to appease an ideological base, and numerous examples of state officials meddling in education are only starting points. Beyond that, the state legislature has voted to (unconstitutionally) ignore the will of Arizona's voters several times, has voted to (unconstitutionally) violate the Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution, and has voted to waste my money in numerous ways, all while cutting funding in the worst places possible.

It feels good to get all of those gripes out, but that doesn't change the fact that it's hard work to sit down and talk in detail about any of those problems. As someone who writes about what's on his mind, I really have a hard time putting these thoughts on virtual paper. It's not that my feelings are difficult to express. If anything, my feelings are exceptionally easy to express. There are numerous four-letter words (and varying declensions and conjugations thereof) that express my emotions quite clearly. The bigger issue is how difficult it really is to share the ideas behind those emotions because I get so frustrated that I just want to walk away in the middle of writing.

On a more positive note, I plan to write at least once a week again on this page, and look for things that are less oriented towards politics as soon as later today.

Oh, no, he's been talking to education theorists!

The text of what President Obama will say tomorrow:

"Hello everyone – how’s everybody doing today? I’m here with students at Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia. And we’ve got students tuning in from all across America, kindergarten through twelfth grade. I’m glad you all could join us today.

I know that for many of you, today is the first day of school. And for those of you in kindergarten, or starting middle or high school, it’s your first day in a new school, so it’s understandable if you’re a little nervous. I imagine there are some seniors out there who are feeling pretty good right now, with just one more year to go. And no matter what grade you’re in, some of you are probably wishing it were still summer, and you could’ve stayed in bed just a little longer this morning.

I know that feeling. When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me extra lessons herself, Monday through Friday – at 4:30 in the morning.

Now I wasn’t too happy about getting up that early. A lot of times, I’d fall asleep right there at the kitchen table. But whenever I’d complain, my mother would just give me one of those looks and say, "This is no picnic for me either, buster."

So I know some of you are still adjusting to being back at school. But I’m here today because I have something important to discuss with you. I’m here because I want to talk with you about your education and what’s expected of all of you in this new school year.

Now I’ve given a lot of speeches about education. And I’ve talked a lot about responsibility.

I’ve talked about your teachers’ responsibility for inspiring you, and pushing you to learn.

I’ve talked about your parents’ responsibility for making sure you stay on track, and get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox.

I’ve talked a lot about your government’s responsibility for setting high standards, supporting teachers and principals, and turning around schools that aren’t working where students aren’t getting the opportunities they deserve.

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed.

And that’s what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education. I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself.

Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide.

Maybe you could be a good writer – maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper – but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor – maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine – but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.

And no matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.

And this isn’t just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you’re learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.

You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don’t do that – if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.

Now I know it’s not always easy to do well in school. I know a lot of you have challenges in your lives right now that can make it hard to focus on your schoolwork.

I get it. I know what that’s like. My father left my family when I was two years old, and I was raised by a single mother who struggled at times to pay the bills and wasn’t always able to give us things the other kids had. There were times when I missed having a father in my life. There were times when I was lonely and felt like I didn’t fit in.

So I wasn’t always as focused as I should have been. I did some things I’m not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have. And my life could have easily taken a turn for the worse.

But I was fortunate. I got a lot of second chances and had the opportunity to go to college, and law school, and follow my dreams. My wife, our First Lady Michelle Obama, has a similar story. Neither of her parents had gone to college, and they didn’t have much. But they worked hard, and she worked hard, so that she could go to the best schools in this country.

Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don’t have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job, and there’s not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren’t right.

But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying.

Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.

That’s what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.

Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn’t speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.

I’m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s fought brain cancer since he was three. He’s endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer – hundreds of extra hours – to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he’s headed to college this fall.

And then there’s Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and she’s on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.

Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren’t any different from any of you. They faced challenges in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to do the same.

That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education – and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you’ll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you’ll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you’ll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you’ll all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don’t feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.

Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.

I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work -- that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things.

But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.

That’s OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, "I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.

No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust – a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor – and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.

And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you – don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.

It’s the story of students who sat where you sit 250 years ago, and went on to wage a revolution and found this nation. Students who sat where you sit 75 years ago who overcame a Depression and won a world war; who fought for civil rights and put a man on the moon. Students who sat where you sit 20 years ago who founded Google, Twitter and Facebook and changed the way we communicate with each other.

So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? What problems are you going to solve? What discoveries will you make? What will a president who comes here in twenty or fifty or one hundred years say about what all of you did for this country?

Your families, your teachers, and I are doing everything we can to make sure you have the education you need to answer these questions. I’m working hard to fix up your classrooms and get you the books, equipment and computers you need to learn. But you’ve got to do your part too. So I expect you to get serious this year. I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do. I expect great things from each of you. So don’t let us down – don’t let your family or your country or yourself down. Make us all proud. I know you can do it.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America."

Note that he repeatedly invokes "no excuses" and "work hard," both of which are themes that currently are being studied by education researchers. Basically, it looks like kids who work hard to overcome adversity continue to work hard once the adversity is gone and they are more successful in school, life, and work. Amazing.

so, I haven't updated in a while

It's not that I don't have anything to say or that I've stopped having strong opinions. It's more to do with the fact that the news has turned into a parody of itself and my personal life is at a point where there's not much that I can discuss publicly.

On the personal front, my wife has had our second child (two months ago) and, like much of the country, I'm under-paid for my family's needs. Professionally, I'm still teaching and now working mostly as a Social Studies teacher. I've taken on a Government class, which means that I get to instill my obsession with US politics and governance in a new generation of learners. That's actually pretty exciting, and if I had time to do it the right way, this would be an absolutely incredible class. As I don't have that time, it'll likely be a good class.

Here's my newest rant (not that you haven't read it already in a hundred other places):

What kind of supposedly responsible parent would keep a child out of school on Tuesday?

What good can possibly come of keeping your kid from hearing President Obama speak? I've read of places where schools are starting to realize that they will lose money by not having kids in school. I've read numerous accusations that this speech is an attempt to force socialism on our kids. I've read numerous paranoid assertions that this is unconstitutional or in some way a failure to separate politics from education. Folks, here's the reality of it. It doesn't matter if Obama is a socialist (he's not) or if he wants to indoctrinate your kids (he may) or if he's not separating politics from education (his speech is on staying in school - not sure where the politics are there). What matters is that this is a great opportunity for students to hear the President of the United States of America address them directly and begin a conversation that should continue in the classrooms after he has finished speaking.

Seriously, now. We show kids video of Hitler and Hussein, give them transcripts of Churchill and Roosevelt, and have them study maps of Waterloo and the Somme. We expect them to analyze forms of government around the world and assess various political ideologies for their strengths and weaknesses. Surely, their fragile little minds can handle one speech encouraging them to take their education seriously. I don't care about the fact that GHWB and Reagan both addressed students like this. I don't care that most schools fail to teach adequately the things that I've listed above. What I care is that this is a great opportunity for students to actively learn how our government really operates, and they are being taught all of the wrong lessons in far too many places. Ironically, timing and technology may keep me from being able to show it live to my Government class, but I certainly plan to get it recorded and use it as soon as possible.